ISLAMABAD, 4 December 2006 — Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri will pay an official visit to Afghanistan from Dec. 7-9 to hold talks with his Afghan counterpart Rangin Dadfar Spanta to finalize arrangements for the joint “Loya Jirga.”
Pakistan and Afghanistan had accepted the proposal to call a “jirga” (tribal assembly) during a trilateral meeting between US President George W. Bush, President Hamid Karzai and President Pervez Musharraf in Washington earlier.
“Officials of the two countries have been working on the issue. They short-listed the subjects which will form the agenda initially for the foreign ministerial meeting and later for Pak-Afghan summit meeting,” officials said.
“So far a schedule for the proposed Pak-Afghan summit had not been finalized,” they said.
Both Pakistan and Afghanistan are facing cross-border terrorism with Pakistan having deployed thousands of troops on its northwestern border to check movements of militant Taleban.
In the past, Afghanistan and Pakistan have blamed each other for the trouble in the border region. But after the intervention of Bush both the countries are jointly tackling the problem of insurgency.
